The Irish Goodbye

Gather initial thoughts and broad opinions about the book.

1. Each of the Ryan sisters offers a very different window into the family’s shared trauma. Whose perspective did you connect with the most, and how did seeing the story through all three of their eyes shape your overall impression of the family’s tragedy?

2. Like Ann Patchett’s The Dutch House, this novel features a family home that is central to the characters’ identities and unresolved past. How did the Folly’s role in the Ryan family’s story compare to the role of the house in other family sagas you’ve read?

3. What was the most memorable or emotionally impactful scene for you in The Irish Goodbye? Did the novel’s ending feel earned after the intensity of the Thanksgiving weekend?

Encourage readers to connect the book’s themes and characters with their personal experiences.

1. Characters in the novel feel a deep connection with the Folly, the family home, viewing it as a container for decades of family memory, both painful and cherished. Have you ever felt a profound connection with a home or any other physical space? How has that space shaped your memories, emptions, or choices?

2. Cait, Alice, and Maggie find it difficult to forgive themselves for past decisions. Recall such a difficult choice in your own life. How did you find a way to make peace with it?

3. Did you recognize familiar family roles in the dynamic between the sisters, with Alice as the caretaker, Cait as the escapee, and Maggie as the observer? Do similar roles play out in your own family, friend group, or community?

4. In the novel, Cait accuses Luke of enabling a push-pull dynamic between them. Luke also seems to alternate between pursuing Cait and ignoring her. Have you ever experienced or witnessed such a dynamic in a romantic relationship?

Examine the book’s relevance to societal issues, historical events, or cultural themes.

1. The novel is set against the backdrop of Long Island’s North Fork transforming from a working-class area to a wealthy tourist spot. How does this socioeconomic pressure on the Ryan family reflect similar concerns in contemporary society about gentrification?

2. How do the three sisters’ individual crises—Alice’s unwanted pregnancy, Cait’s career and marital dissatisfaction, and Maggie’s struggle for acceptance—reflect broader conversations about the pressures that women face today regarding career, motherhood, and personal identity?

Dive into the book’s structure, characters, themes, and symbolism.

1. How did the novel’s nonlinear structure—jumping between the sisters’ perspectives and flashing back to 1990—affect your experience as a reader? What did this add to the suspense and the exploration of memory?

2. What significance does the family home, the Folly, hold in the novel? How does its name and physical state of disrepair work as a metaphor for the Ryan family’s psychological condition?

3. Discuss Isabel’s role in the narrative as an outsider. In what ways does her presence challenge the Ryan family’s dysfunctional patterns? What truths is she able to see and articulate that the family members cannot?

4. Pat Conroy’s Prince of Tides is another novel that explores how a charismatic brother’s trauma reverberates through a family in a coastal setting. How does The Irish Goodbye’s portrayal of unresolved family grief compare to other stories that tackle similar themes?

5. Was the novel’s final scene, where the sisters burn the sympathy cards, a satisfying and believable resolution for you? What do you imagine the future holds for Cait, Alice, and Maggie, both individually and as a reunited family?

Encourage imaginative and creative connections to the book.

1. Before the sisters read Mrs. Larkin’s condolence card, its contents loom as a source of dread. What did you imagine the card said? If you were to write the version of the card that the Ryans feared most, what would it say?

2. Alice is an aspiring interior designer. If she were to redesign the Folly at the end of the novel to reflect the family’s new chapter, what changes do you think she would make, especially to Topher’s room?